a flame you wish you could extinguish
by Grand Phoenix
Summary: You're gonna need a ton of water for that, hon. And a really good alibi. [Sylvanas and Nathanos, at Darkshore during the Burning of Teldrassil][Warning: Wildly OOC, with dark humor and Story Forum bashing inside]
1. Chapter 1

**Notes1:** Inspired by the in-game cutscene in _Battle for Azeroth_ from the most recent beta build at the time of this post, where Sylvanas is standing by Captain Delaryn Summermoon's corpse and watching Teldrassil go down in a blaze that she more or less did not cause but will get all the blame for just by simply being there at the wrong place at the wrong time (but primarily because of conducting the assault on Darkshore and pushing into Teldrassil itself to conquer it for the Horde and, most likely, keep a monopoly on the azurite that crops up all over Kalimdor as much as it does the rest of Azeroth).

 **Notes2:** Also because this was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the thumbnail for the YouTube video and thought _Yeah, that's exactly how Impressions!verse Sylvanas would react to the Burning_.

Which brings up an interesting point: In _First Impressions_ canon, it is outright stated multiple times that when the Nexus has no more need of its Heroes, everyone will be drawn back into the universe from the time period they were pulled from; at the end of the day, as bittersweet as it is (and probably esoterically happy, dependent on one's interpretation), it is the canon ending to _First Impressions_. However, it is also mentioned by certain characters - uncertainly, but with varying, mixed reactions - that it may be possible for a Hero to regain all the memories of the time he/she/it/they made in the Nexus. In short, the Nexus follows the law of returning the Status Quo to Zero (or, at the very least, as mathematically close to zero as humanly possible). Since that particular fanfic deals heavily in the Many-Worlds Interpretation theory, quantum mechanics, and treating Out-Of-Character personalities seriously, the idea of WoD!Sylvanas (which is the time period Impressions!verse Sylvanas was drawn from) remembering everything from her time in the Nexus and the personality that was developed environmentally (via the transition) and psychologically (as a result of dealing with folk in a transitioned universe) is very possible...but also very unlikely, depending on certain factors that may be able to trigger the sensation of recall.

I debated as to whether or not this should have a distant correlation to the series. Unfortunately I could not come up with an actual answer other than "It's dubious at best, disputed at worst", so the last few lines are left intentionally vague and open to interpretation. (Although if I did have to reach a conclusion to this question, it would probably be a shrug and a "Maybe...Maybe not.")

* * *

"Aw _fuck me_ ," Sylvanas says, nearly groans it. Her neck is starting to be a bother but she can't look away.

Even though it's so very, very close, Teldrassil is very far away.

It's also on fire. The whole shebang, crinkling a nasty purple-black with runnels of red seeping out of the bark where the flames are devouring it from the inside out. All the leaves at the top are gone, too, and she can't decide between it looking like it came out of a trashcan fire or a Midsummer Fire Festival's display.

Either way, it doesn't matter. That thing is on fire, and she can tell right away it's going to be burning for a long, long, _long_ time.

"Oh _fuck_ ," Sylvanas says again, backing up further along the shore. Past the dead night elf lying on her side. "Oh fucking... _Goddammit it all to hell!_ " She clenches her fists at the sight of the Undercity galleons and Orgrimmar warships retreating toward the Veiled Sea, at all the fucking flames falling in the sky. "Mother _fucker_ -"

"What a beautiful sight!" growls a man with dark triumph. "That's what I'm talking about!"

Sylvanas freezes, whirls around at the footsteps crunching behind her. It's Nathanos, and he's sporting a grin that'd put all the beefcakes like Garrosh and great whale sharks to shame. It scares her, but even then she'd never admit to anyone alive, dead, or undead under pain of death and the darkness waiting for her. "This isn't what I had in mind," she says through clenched teeth. "I wanted to take it. I did not burn it."

"Oh, what does it matter? The more dead Alliance, the better! There are plenty of trees for us to take, anyway."

"Nathanos-"

"The only good elf is a dead elf. And what's better than a dead elf? _A dead night elf._ " That grin doesn't just get dark. It gets downright sinister. It also makes his crimson eyes squint into slits, which causes the skin underneath to crinkle and fall off in a teeny-tiny plaster dusting.

Sylvanas just can't be assed to be appalled right now. "Nathanos, _listen to me-_ "

"SCORE ONE FOR THE HORDE TEAM!" he shouts at the tree. "TOUCHDOWN, MOTHERFUCKERS! Where's your Mother Moon now?! HUH?! Where is she? Not with you punching bags, that's for sure! I hope you all fucking roasted! And if you haven't, I hope you all found your way to your god-king! If it ain't one bitch you grovel to, it's gotta be another!"

Sylvanas stares at him, stunned. "Dude. The _fuck_."

"So go ahead and suck his underaged dick! Go suck on that human potential for all it's worth! We'll see where it gets ya when we come! When the Dark Lady comes!"

 _"What."_

"Gonna make ya feel real good when daddy comes for ya!" Nathanos roars laughter, slips his hand between his legs and….

Sylvanas shakes her head and looks away just as he begins to thrust his pelvis and mimic the motions, making grunting sounds and grumbling "Come to papa!" under his breath.

Never before has she felt more dead inside. She didn't think it was possible. But the day has finally come, and today couldn't possibly get any worse.

If they stand around looking—and acting—stupid any longer for the Alliance to take advantage of, it _will_.

So while Nathanos is lost in his own world and repeating asinine bullshit (it sounds like he's saying "I'll show you somethin' morally grey!" and she tunes it out immediately when she distinctly hears him say "It's gonna shoot straight outta my-!"), Sylvanas goes to put her hand on his shoulder and shakes him. "Nathanos," she says. "Nathanos!"

"Bend over, ya knife-eared slut-!"

"Nathanos!" she yells in his ear. Yanks that offending hand away and up behind his back while pushing him upright with the other. It gets him to stop and wipes the dreadful, primal look on his face, and Sylvanas has never thought she'd be so inwardly glad to see it gone. "We have to go. Now!"

"What? But my Lady-"

"We are not going to stand here, jacking off to a burning tree!" She cries, and points at Teldrassil for emphasis. Mimicking a dramatic sigh, she drops her arm and looks around. "Where's Saurfang?"

Nathanos scoffs. "That old buzzard took off somewhere."

She turns him around and shoves him forward. "Go find him and tell him to pull out! We're done here!"

"What about the Alliance-"

"We'll worry about that later! Just go!" She moves to get him going again, but Nathanos is out of her reach and sprinting up the bank and onto higher ground. She watches him disappear into the treeline, and then there's only her, the coast of Darkshore, a dead night elf woman, and Teldrassil's hulking, blazing corpse in the distance.

There is only the sound of the waves lapping against the shore. The birds, if there are any, have long since fled.

This doesn't feel real.

Hell, none of this feels _real_.

If anything, the past few months have felt like a dream.

But the tree's been blazing for...three minutes, she thinks? The night elf woman with the arrows sticking out of her hasn't woken up, and there is literally no one around who can come up to her detractors and say she didn't decide to stick a match at the base of Teldrassil and watch the whole thing go up in smoke just for shits and giggles.

Somehow, that last part evokes a very small, very quiet pang of sadness. She knows why, but at the same time she _doesn't_ , and the thought makes her fidget uncomfortably.

All of that's wiped away the longer she looks at the tree. "Fuck me!" Sylvanas snarls, and kicks a gout of sand and sediment into the sea. "Fucking...fuckity…fuck!" She sags forward, almost doubled over, putting her head between her hands. Sighs, shakes, and with another, more explosive imitation of breath straightens all the way up, arms falling lifelessly to her sides.

Her ears droop against her skull. "Fuck _me!_ "


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes1:** This wasn't intended to have a continuation...but then Sylvanas said unto me, in typical Sylvanas Windrunner fashion, "Hold my beer and watch this!", and proved me how very wrong I was. Which is funny, because I _distinctly_ remember the WoWpedia article for Teldrassil mentioning - with a source, mind you - that the Horde burned it down several months before _Warbringers: Sylvanas_ was revealed.

(Although I am of the opinion that Blizzard should've kept mum about the whole thing from the start instead of saying, right out of Blizzcon, the Horde did it - or, rather, asked the question "Who burned Teldrassil?" when they had admitted in an interview a while back that that had only been stated as such because development was in the early alpha stages - which are subjected to change at any given point - and not yet finalized. This, I believe, is the crux of the problem behind the War of the Thorns event. In my opinion, it doesn't matter to me anymore if the Horde is more "aggressive" or if the Alliance is more "righteous", although the latter, contrary to popular belief, has shown instances of displaying their grit and fangs when the needs suit them; you don't have to be raising bodies left and right and be proactive to be warlike - but again, the topic of Alliance aggression should be reserved for another time.)

I still like her, though. Such things have never truly stopped me before, and my reaction was more or less a calm if awed sense of 'Oh shit, we're really going to do this, aren't we?' compared to the overcharged, thoroughly heated reactions (almost a self-inflicted frenzy, in my opinion) that came out of it. Ah, but that's neither here nor there; my reasonings would take up a lot more space than this, were I to fully explain myself.

* * *

"What in the _ever-loving shit was that?_ " Sylvanas asks the aether—which is in the form of Nathanos Blightcaller—at her side. Despite her outburst, he's relatively calm, almost nonplussed. It must come with the package of being an omniscient, omnipresent entity of amorphous, mathematical quantum equations.

"That was an event from a universe in which the Burning of Teldrassil was caused by an unknown third party," he says; despite the masculine appearance, his voice is more androgynously robotic, something that accomplishes to send an uncomfortable squirm in the Banshee Queen's gut. (No one has to know, but even if they did they wouldn't be above to refute themselves.) "Most people were of the opinion it was caused by Genn Greymane, Jaina Proudmoore, or even, let's say, someone as quite and obscure as Queen Azshara. You remember her, don't you?"

"Now I do, but should I really care?" she posits sarcastically.

"Do you?"

"No."

"Then that settles it."

"Like fuck it does! What really happened?"

The aether levels her a serious look. "Are you sure you want to know? As in, do you really-"

"Don't be a child! Just show me who burned it!"

He shrugs. "If you insist. Stay still…."

So Sylvanas stood still and, for the second time that day, allows the aether to cleave her soul from her body and drag it across dimensions into the default sector from whence she had come upon the drawing into the Nexus.

For the first few minutes, Sylvanas appears blasé. She simply nods here and there in certain spots; yes, yes, that was exactly how she would've acted. Right in-character. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But after a few minutes, her expression changes—curiosity gives way to slow realization. Then her eyes fly open, her gaze becomes unfocused, and her ears shoot up quivering to attention. Her lips curl back, more cringe than a snarl.

The aether made a gesture with his hands, and Sylvanas shakes back to wakefulness as her soul is returned—improperly, just like all the other times—to her body. She blinks owlishly. "W-Well then. That's, uh...um…huh." She scratches her head. " _Damn._ "

"Content?" the aether asks.

"That's...definitely something I might do…? I mean, I must have had a good reason….right?"

"We don't know. Do you think you can justify genocide?"

"That was mass murder. It wasn't intentional."

"Is it now?" Nathanos hums. "Definitions must have changed when last we checked."

"I'm serious. I decided on a whim, but not because that woman was pitying me."

"We believe you meant to say 'triggered.'"

"Okay, no," Sylvanas says, whirling on him. " _No_. I was not triggered. Triggers are serious business. You shouldn't make light of them."

"That is so rich, we can taste the potential for ending interdimensional hunger and achieving post-scarcity utopian peace on the tip of our tongue."

"I'm playing devil's advocate, try and sue me."

"You don't make millions. You barely make a thousand to your name in six months unless someone pays you off for the rare, lucrative job or you get lucky. Extremely _lucky_ , we should add," the aether tacks on, staring the elf down the bridge of his nose. (She'd forgotten on large and aquiline Nathanos's nose was in life; it seems to run par for course in his family).

"No, really. Anything can be given a good reason. These things happen for a reason. It's all a matter of perception. Look at Illidan. Look at how everything is going to pay off."

"If he maintains that course—which he will, knowing him. But just because it was all done in the name of the greater good does not mean it will be easily forgiven nor readily forgotten. For what measure is a life if the end result must be paid in blood and the souls of the innocent?"

"If it gets you what you want in the end, then everything will have been worth it. Trust me, I know what I'm doing-Future Me, that is. You'll see."

"We already have. If anything, _we_ should be asking if _you_ will see that, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. Ah, but we shall do so all the same. It would be interesting to see how your present incarnation as you are now will react and respond accordingly when the time comes."

"You're damn fucking right I will. Just, ah, do me one last favor before you go," she adds quickly, just as the aether is about to depart.

"What shall it be, Lady Sylvanas?"

"Scrub all this from my memory. Like, full-on systematic restore scrubbing. I don't want Malfurion and his Happy Tree Friends to find out. Maiev rides my ass on a near daily basis, anyway; I don't want her to give Whitemane more ideas. And no, I'm not going to make any promises I'll be a 'good girl'; fuck that bullshit. I make the rules, I'm stickin' to 'em."

The aether sighs. "It is a ninety-nine point nine percent chance you would not adhere to our conditions in the end. Very well. We shall erase what we have shown you, if not by request than by the status quo that is the first and last law of the universe. What did you want to replace them with?"

"Fuck if I know. Just give me something that'll get Nova to agree with me. I don't care what it is."

"As you so desire. Until we meet again," says the aether, and waves its hand.

When Sylvanas blinks, the facsimile of Nathanos Blightcaller is gone. Only the faint strings of a chopped, screwed version of Vaporwave floating in the air indicated he—it-had left a vestigial, esoteric presence on the current basis of structural, systematic integrity. _The best-the best-to you~ from K-Mart radio~oh~oh~o_ _h~_

"Fuck," Sylvanas mutters, and puts a hand to her head. "That was weird. What am I doing out here again?" She snaps her fingers. "That's right. I was going to ask Nova if she wanted to go penguin sledding off the coast of Mistharbor's Anchor while being chased by D.E.H.T.A and successfully evading Valla's wrath….although _why_ I would want to use an endangered species as a boogie board is beyond me." She shrugs dramatically. "Bah! Who gives a shit!" Having said that, Sylvanas whirls around and starts striking a path toward the Shire's plaza. "Hey, Nova! Where are you? I got a question for you!"


End file.
